Google officially announces new Nexus 7

Google has announced the new Nexus 7, the same device that has been rumored and detailed repeatedly over the past few months. Also made by Asus like the original one, the new Nexus 7 is thinner, lighter, features a new high-resolution 7-inch screen and packs quite a punch under its hood.

As expected, Google and Asus have equipped the new Nexus 7 with a 7-inch 1920x1200 10-point IPS LCD touchscreen and in case you wonder, it adds up to a pixel density of 323 ppi. The heart of it is Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core clocked at 1.5GHz paired up with Adreno 320 GPU and 2GB of RAM. According to Google, it is 1.8x faster CPU and 4x faster GPU when compared to the old Nexus 7.

The rest of the specs include 5-megapixel rear and 1.2-megapixel front camera, dual-band WiFi (802.11abgn), Bluetooth 4.0, HDMI output via SlimPort, stereo speakers, NFC and Qi-compatible wireless charging support and 4G LTE support. It runs on a brand new Android 4.3 Jelly Bean OS and feature a battery that should be enough to keep it alive for 9 hours of video playback and 10 hours of web-surfing, according to Google.

Despite adding more power and more components and features, Google and Asus managed to squeeze in everything inside a case that is quite thinner at only 7.6mm (down from 10.45 on the old one) as well as lighten the load at 317.5g. In case you were wondering, the precise dimensions are 114.3x200.6x7.6mm. Google was also proud on the fact that Asus even managed to narrow the bezel down to 2.75mm on each side of the device.

As it was the case with most recent Google announced devices, this one will also have an unlocked LTE edition that will work on all networks in the US, AT&T, T-Mobile and verizon, so basically, it will be a single model. The WiFi-only version will be available in 32 and 16GB versions and will be priced at US $229 and US $269, as expected. The unlocked LTE model will be available only with 32GB of storage and will be priced at US $349.

As expected, the new Google Nexus 7 will launch on July 30th and will be available in the US on that date but will also come to the UK, Germany, France, Spain, South Korea, Japan, Australia and Canada in the coming weeks.